Patents

"But what about human nature? Can it be changed? And if not, will it endure under Anarchism? Poor human nature, what horrible crimes have been committed in thy name! Every fool, from king to policeman, from the flatheaded parson to the visionless dabbler in science, presumes to speak authoritatively of human nature. The greater the mental charlatan, the more definite his insistence on the wickedness and weaknesses of human nature. Yet, how can any one speak of it today, with every soul in a prison, with every heart fettered, wounded, and maimed? John Burroughs has stated that experimental study of animals in captivity is absolutely useless. Their character, their habits, their appetites undergo a complete transformation when torn from their soil in field and forest. With human nature caged in a narrow space, whipped daily into submission, how can we speak of its potentialities? Freedom, expansion, opportunity, and, above all, peace and repose, alone can teach us the real dominant factors of human nature and all its wonderful possibilities." -- Emma Goldman, "Anarchism and Other Essays"

Never been to NewGrounds Shaw? Or any other open media source?
The people who enjoy making media/entertainment and putting it up to the judgment of the users would continue to do so.

Alright Primates listen up. Human nature is effectively summarized as the urge to survive and the urge to procreate. Everything else is human behavior, something that changes according to circumstance.

Right without going into the basics of gift economies (I'd be happy to discuss that in another thread or point you to some good links).

The large amount of indie games/open-source software/wiki...etc contradicts your statement because many people in the software industry dont do what they do because they will earn millions of dollars for it (also they actually wont in the first place anyways but more on that later), they do it because they like the work they do, kinda like artists. This is then happily exploited by large software developers that simply give the people who design the most succesfull games/software in the world a fairly low wage. In essence you dont need to see patents as protection for the makers of something so they get their fair share of the income, the patents and intelectual properties of software is most of the time just owned by the company these people work in and these people just get their regular wage, furthermore patents are often hoarded and bought by companies to actually destroy competition by their opponents who happen to have similar products. Which brings me to my last point, patents establish sole ownership over some idea, ideas dont just appear out of nowhere, they are created through creative processes that often involve extensive cross-fertilisation between different peoples ideas, establishing sole ownership over some idea stiffles this sort of creative process in favor of rigid monopolies.

ps: Lenin_cat does not mean to say that only software developers need to enter a gift economy, this situation would occur in a society where everyone would do this, so its not like they would starve.

I don't have a stance on patents in general but software patents I'm strongly against.

They're fine as long as they don't get excessive.

I'm conflicted. As a matter of maintaining order and innovation, they're great. But most media today is only artificially scarce. We're getting a bit ahead of our economic system.

Very fair point although I think you're referring to copyright rather than patents, if I'm not mistaken. MP3 downloads, e-books etc. It's a very strange time indeed.

A good, humorous read on the retardation of the issue that is horrifyingly true:
http://www.cracked.com/article_18817_5-reasons-future-will-be-ruled-by-b.s..html